Connecting Bristol » Knowle West Media Centre meets Lesley Belgium

Knowle West Media Centre meets Lesley Belgium

November 24, 2006 Posted by Roz in : Digital Challenge, Community Media, e-society, Learning, Environment , trackback

Lesley Belgium
30 October 2006

I met with Lesley Belgium. Lesley told me that her children help her if something goes wrong with the computer, or if she has any issues with using it, such as accessing different things on line. She said that she really relies on her children, especially her daughter, to access the internet and do the things she wants to do with it.

One of the main ways Lesley uses the internet is to have contact with her family in Australia. She said that she found such exchange really beneficial, because of the speed with which she can communicate with her family compared to how long it used to take for a letter to reach them. However, she told me that one issues for her is that she doesn’t always check her email regularly, and so sometimes when people expect an immediate response to email, they don’t get it from her. We talked about how people have different uses of things like email and consequently have different expectations of each other’s uses.

Lesley said that she also finds shopping on line very useful, especially when trying to buy specialist items, such as craft shop things and materials for making jewellery. She told me that it’s brilliant to be able to go on line and just order such things without having to make a special journey or traipse around town all day.

Lesley also explained that she is trying to build up a business and that the internet is an excellent forum for selling as well as buying. She told me that her daughter has helped her to set up a small web site for her business, but that she is yet to get a domain name for the site. However, even though this means there is no ‘passing trade’ it is still a useful reference for people who she has met already.

Lesley then talked about Green forums on line and how such spaces were really interesting and useful ways of getting to know what is going on globally and locally, and to have some comparison between the two. She added that such spaces are also useful to bounce ideas between each other, and to make connections with others. She told me that she had been on holiday to Wales and that whilst there she visited a small holding, to meet the people involved face to face. She had originally met the people there on line, and had corresponded for several months before visiting. She said it was great to be able to meet people on line like this and then follow it up with a real visit, when she was in the area, to see exactly what, for example, the pigs at the small holding looked like. She said that it was a lot like having a pen friend, which has always appealed to Lesley, and, she said, she thinks this appeals to lots of people.

Lesley then told me that her mother is housebound as she suffers from agoraphobia. She said that her mother doesn’t know about computers, and it would really benefit her if she did. Lesley talked about how much can change in the outside world if you are housebound, without you knowing about it. For example, she said there were things in the shops that her Mum probably just doesn’t know exists, so if she was able to see these things on line it might address the extent to which she is cut off from day to day life and changes that take place.

Lesley added that as well as being a potentially valuable asset for housebound people in terms of shopping, the internet could also be a space in which people can develop a wealth of friendships, as well as sustaining old connections, as with Lesley’s relatives in Australia. Lesley said that her mum relies on her to carry out the communication with their Australian relatives as she is not technologically minded, but that the internet could be a lifeline for her and for other people who are housebound, if they overcame their reluctance to use it.

Lesley then told me that she has worked with various people at KWMC, for example when she was involved in digital storytelling. She said that as a writer she often relies on other people’s imaginations, which often informs what she writes, but when she did digital storytelling she had to find images too, which had initially been a challenge. She found this a positive challenge, which stretched her skills and led her to consider the visual and sound elements as well as the written. In this way she found the process more like script writing.

Lesley told me that she had also been involved in digital storytelling as part of the writers group at The Mede, and that on this second occasion, she had approached it differently. She said that on the first occasion, she had adapted a story that she had already written, but on the second occasion she used images as her starting point. She said that neither approach had been any better than the other, and that it was good to know that equally good results could come out of these different approaches.

Lesley then talked about the potential of the internet as an educational tool. She told me that her son has recently joined a big on line ‘dungeons and dragons’ type game. She said that she thought such uses of the internet meant that he would develop his keyboard and internet skills through his informal interests. However, she highlighted the importance of ensuring that he still gets fresh air and exercise. She added that he also can improve his literacy skills through on line exchange, and said that event though he may have exchanges with other young people who might not spell everything correctly, he would still learn how to communicate what it is that he wants to say.

Lesley then talked about mobile phones and told me that the service whereby she is alerted by a text message, when she receives an email, is one of the useful functions of her phone. She said that it is particularly useful in alerting her to emails from her cousin in Australia. She said that the exchange she has with her cousin using email makes up for the sort of communication they would have if they lived close to each other and bumped into each other at the shops. She also said that the ease with which she can attach a photo and send it to her relatives in Australia is brilliant; far easier and quicker than it ever was by post.

Lesely said she thought there was a need for more courses in IT, especially ‘IT for the terrified’. She said that lots of people think that computers are really hard to use when they aren’t really. She said that there needs to be more courses that allow people to realise that computers are basically stupid and can only do what it is that you tell them to do. She said that people, especially some older people, who’ve never had the chance to use a computer, imagine them to be some sort of artificial intelligence, which really intimidates them.

Lesley told me that she writes down the process for doing things, like copying files to a disk, until she remembers how to do them.

Lesley then commented that there is an advantage in the use of computers for women of a certain age, who learnt typing at school, because if you have keyboard skills then you have the main skill necessary for using a computer.

Lesley told me that her family has two computers, one of which is used for internet access, and the other is used for other things. She told me that she had once had a Spectrum ZX, which she used to play games on, and commented on how much simpler computers are to use now. She said that people who have only had contact with such old technology have a notion of computers being really hard to use, when they are now actually quite easy to use. She told me that there are people in the writing group at The Mede, for example, who won’t go anywhere near computers, she said it was something like a phobia of technology that underpinned this, but that this was because they were worried that it could go wrong, or that they would get it wrong. She said that this is just because they aren’t familiar with computers, and that if they were familiarised then they would realise that using a computer is as easy as using a kettle, once you get used to it.

Lesley then talked about lots of people using the internet to research their family trees. She said that this is so much easier than it used to be, and involves a lot less travelling around because of records like the census being on line, that more and more people are doing it. Lesley said that she advocates using the internet to this end and tries to explain to people that they don’t need to be a technical whizz to be able to use it.

Lesley said that her children have grown up with computers and so don’t think anything of using the internet. It is often the first place they go to in order to find something out. As a parent however, she said she ahs to be aware of the ways in which the internet is open to abuse, and consequently has to use a firewall and other such devices. However, she said that really it is just as simple as ensuring that her children never give out their home address or other such details to people who they don’t know. She added that this didn’t just apply to young people, as it is very easy for people to feel like they have made a connection with people, who they don’t know at all, through email exchange.

Lesley commented on the public access computers at the Mede and the Library, but said that she thought there was the need for more computers to be accessible, and to this end she would like to see an internet café, for example on Filwood Broadway, with a facilitator who would help people to do whatever they wanted. Lesley told me that there used to be ‘tutorial’ sessions like this at the Mede.

Lesley added that many people are misguided into thinking that the internet is just a recreational tool for young people, but she strongly believes that it is something that all members of the community could benefit from having access to.

Lesley said that one of the future benefits for her was the capacity to be able to publish on line, and she highlighted how much more feasible it is to publish an e-book than a physical book.

Lesley said that she also thinks there is something to be said for people using digital storytelling and blogs to share experiences and in that way to get to know about cultures that are different to their own. She said that people might think of blogs as just diaries on line, and so they may assume that no one would be interested in their diary. However, Lesley suggested that people are interested in other people’s diaries, out of basic human interest.

Lesley then talked about the accessibility of things written on line, specifically she talked about people who write theories about things like climate change, and then publish these theories in books. Lesley said she thought such information should also be published on line to ensure that as many people as possible can read it. She said that through using the internet in this way people could learn from each other’s examples, citing how people are fined in Australia for not recycling properly.

Lesley said that she thinks there are many needs that have to be addressed in terms of making digital technology accessible, and extending access for people, so that people who are, for example, visually impaired and people who are housebound can benefit from the opportunities there would be for them through using the internet, because it could really change some people’s lives.

Connecting Bristol is the city’s response to the Digital Challenge.